News

1. Can you share with us what retinal eye disease you have and when you were diagnosed? When I was 15, I was diagnosed with cataracts. I woke up one morning with persistent blurry vision. My mother immediately brought me to my optometrist, who made the diagnosis. Several complications accompanied my cataracts, including numerous retinal…

Last fall, the federal Minister of Health announced that Canada would “introduce a new approach that will better support the development and authorization of drugs for rare diseases.” Commonly called an orphan drug plan, such regulations encourage drug manufacturers to test therapies for rare diseases like retinitis pigmentosa, Stargardt disease and choroideremia, and to seek…

An additional treatment option for people with wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) will soon be available in Canada. Health Canada has just approved Eyelea, a drug made and marketed by Bayer Inc. Eyelea (also known as aflibercept) is used to treat the most severe form of AMD known as wet AMD. The drug is given…

A $5 million grant from Alberta’s provincial health funder is establishing a Canadian Centre of Excellence for ocular gene therapy research. Drs. Ian MacDonald and Tania Bubela at the University of Alberta are leading a team of researchers, clinicians, and academics who will work together as the Alberta Ocular Gene Therapy Team. Their team will…

A new drug being developed by Roche Pharmaceuticals may slow vision loss due to dry age-related macular degeneration (dry AMD). Dry AMD causes the slow death of vision cells in the retina. It is the most common, early form of age-related macular degeneration. In people with dry AMD, the retina begins to thin and –…

In 1973, Glen and Rita Popowich moved to Calgary with their infant son, Paul, to start their own business: Crosstown Heating & Ventilating Ltd. In the early years they rented a fabrication shop and did all estimating and accounting at home. Forty years later, their business, doing commercial HVAC work, now employs some third generation…

The Foundation Fighting Blindness is partnering with the the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to fund early studies of a potential drug treatment for retinitis pigmentosa. The studies, led by Dr. Uri Saragovi at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, are searching for drug compounds that would slow vision loss due to retinitis pigmentosa…

Scientists in Japan have received approval to launch a clinical trial of a cell-transplantation therapy for age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The source of cells for this therapy will be a unique type of stem cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), which can be created from the recipient’s own skin cells. Targets of Retinal…

Research led by Dr. Robert Molday at the University of British Columbia has shown that gene therapy designed to target the RD3 gene can protect light-sensing photoreceptors and restore visual function in mice. In humans, mutations in the RD3 gene interfere with the production of an essential protein in the eye and cause Leber congenital…